The present invention relates to an IC card for receiving a command transmitted from a card reader/writer and executing processing in accordance with the received command.
The present invention also relates to an IC card processing system including a card reader/writer for transmitting a command to an IC card and the IC card for receiving a command transmitted from the card reader/writer and executing processing in accordance with the received command.
In addition, the present invention relates to an IC card processing method applied to an IC card for receiving a command transmitted from a card reader/writer and executing processing in accordance with the received command.
Attention has recently been given to an IC card as a portable information storage medium. This IC card incorporates an IC chip including a nonvolatile memory and control section. Files for executing various applications are stored in the nonvolatile memory.
The IC card receives a command transmitted from a card reader/writer and executes a predetermined application in accordance with the command. That is, the IC card reads out predetermined files from the nonvolatile memory and executes the predetermined application.
In addition, a new application can be added to the IC card by storing new files in the nonvolatile memory of the IC card through the card reader/writer.
Obviously, there is a limit to the available capacity of the nonvolatile memory of the IC card, and so is to applications that can be added to the IC card. This impairs the versatility of the IC card.
The present invention has been made to solve the above problem, and has as its object to provide an IC card, IC card processing system, and IC card processing method which can solve the problem of a shortage of memory capacity upon addition of a new application.
According to the present invention, there is provided an IC card comprising communication means receiving externally transmitted data, storage means for storing a file and definition information of the file, and delete means for, when the data received through the communication means is a command to delete a predetermined file, deleting the predetermined file and definition information of the predetermined file from the storage means.
In addition, the IC card processing system of the present invention comprises storage means for storing a file and definition information of the file, and delete means for deleting the predetermine file and the definition information of the predetermined file from the storage means.
Furthermore, according to the present invention, there is provided an IC card processing method comprising the first step of receiving externally transmitted data and the second step of, when the data received in the first step is a command to delete the predetermined file, deleting the predetermined file and definition information of the predetermined file from the data storage section.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out hereinafter.